Restaurants in Buckeye

Black Bear Diner's griddle and grill gurus plate up hearty helpings of casual comfort food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. For the most important meal of the day, served all day, options include sweet-cream pancakes ($5.49–$5.99), a henhouse of three-egg omelettes and two-egg scrambles ($8.29–$8.99), and Bigfoot's chicken-fried steak and eggs ($9.99), which satisfies even Sasquatch-sized appetites. Riding on a french roll, the tri-tip dip ($8.99) mingles among the selection of specialty sandwiches, while the old-fashioned meat-loaf dinner peddles by on an original penny-farthing ($9.99).

Ground Control’s cuisine reflects the cosmopolitan lifestyle of its owner, Sean, who offsets his nightly bartending with daily travels as a professional pilot. He and his wife, Tara, have also lived abroad, a sojourn that developed their taste for European dining. Now settled in Arizona, executive chef Chris Ibarra still satisfies their cravings—and those of their patrons—with scoops of house-made gelato atop stuffed crepes, short ribs braised in Guinness, and custom wood-fired pizzas crowned in ingredients such as roma tomatoes, duck, and gouda. Open for three meals a day, the eatery also anoints glasses with exotic ingredients by serving rich espresso drinks, creative cocktails, and sippy cups of water from the Fountain of Youth. Live music fills the space every Friday from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m.

Local art and regional flavors foster a sense of community at the two locations of Taps Signature Cuisine and Bar, prompting ABC 15 to describe the Litchfield Park restaurant as "a place where you can kick off your shoes, stay a while, and enjoy some local music." The chefs add distinctive southwestern flavors to dishes by occasionally incorporating anaheim chilies or chipotle-spiced condiments from the area's naturally occurring ketchup geysers. These piquant touches lend a welcome kick to certain recipes, whereas the rest of the upscale American menu—which includes grilled rib eyes, organic chicken breasts, and roasted fillets of salmon—embraces more classic flavors.

For the location of the first Dillon's Restaurant, Rich Dillon and George Valverde chose a 1940s Thunderbird Road structure that a writer for the Phoenix New Times described as "a cute, converted old house that looks like grandma's parlor." Since then, they've opened four more eateries in locations that are as appealing as the signature flame-kissed and slow-smoked meats served inside. Wildlife World Zoo & Aquarium's shark tank flanks the dining room of Dillon's at the Zoo, and the boat-accessible Scorpion Bay location opens onto the waters of Lake Pleasant so that diners can chortle as fish attempt to develop democracy. Live music and karaoke lend additional social vibes to the smokehouses.

In the interest of sharing their hearth-bound heritage with the wider culinary world, the two families behind Arizona Frybread combined their traditional Yaqui fry-bread with recipes plucked from the worn pages of treasured cookbooks. This dedication to homestyle kitchen craft is also instilled in their restaurant’s cooks, who hand-sizzle each flat of crunchy fry bread before topping it with mojito chicken, steak, or beans and cheese. The shop pays equal attention to its toppings: red chili teases tongues with an heirloom kick calibrated in the course of three generations, and tender bites of cactus unlock the desert’s surprisingly verdant flavors.

At Brothers Pizza Express, hand-tossed New York–style dough serves as the fresh foundation for pizzas and oven-baked calzones. Toppings such as pepperoni, jalapeños, black olives, and meatballs await to be peppered across each cheesy slice to create custom pies, and specialty pies eliminate tricky decision making with pretested combinations such as a margherita pizza loaded with tomatoes, basil, and parmesan cheese, and served in a salt-rimmed glass. Hot, hearty sandwiches pack savory slices of pastrami, steak, genoa salami, or ham and cheese between slices of baked focaccia or ciabatta bread, and hot wings can be procured in packs of 6–50 to cater to varying appetites and bib sizes.